


lisa's been here for eight years

by stevvienicks



Category: Girl Interrupted (1999)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 01:46:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16651954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stevvienicks/pseuds/stevvienicks
Summary: have you ever confused a dream with life?





	lisa's been here for eight years

At first glance, she scares the shit out of you. The others act like she’s a phantom who’s coming back to haunt the place, a vengeful spirit who will bring down anyone or anything in her path. And on your first day the person in her path is you and she shoves you into a wall with such anger you feel as if you might just smash like glass. You may be crazy, you may be disturbed, but this bitch is psychotic, she’s furious and you think she might be about to break your fucking arm. Her hair tangled in your mouth, she demands to know where Jamie is and you cry, screaming that you don’t know who that is. She’s dragged away, leaving a line of terrified girls in her wake, clinging to their too skinny arms as if they’ve just witnessed a natural disaster. And maybe they kind of have.

You settle in, as much as you can. That ever persistent itch is still there, it doesn’t die down just because you’re locked in with the crazies. You look at a knot, you see a noose. You look at your razor while Valerie watches and you can almost feel the relief of a sharp deep cut along both wrists. Flirtations with death are difficult to break off from, and you’ve certainly gone a lot further than flirting at this point. Lisa’s back, and she seems calmer. For her, anyway. You’re shocked when she talks to you. It’s just a simple exchange but it forces you to look at her. Really look. And the truth is, she’s frighteningly beautiful. You wonder how you didn't see it before. You’re not a dyke, you’re not, but you’ve always been a little drawn to girls like Lisa. The ones who with every part of them seem to demand your attention. Her eyes look like something from a painting and you think her cheekbones might be able to cut glass. She calls you sweet pea and you feel a slight thrill. It’s the thrill of a something.

The two of you get into Daisy’s room and the camaraderie is so rare part of you wants to grab Lisa’s hand and never let go. You laugh and you laugh at Daisy and it’s cruel you know it is, it’s sick but it feels so good to laugh so you let it happen. The two of you cackle like witches at the fucking chicken under Daisy's bed and when Lisa gives you that approving smile, you feel wildly accomplished. Like you would do anything to see her smile at you like that again. You know Lisa is dangerous,you know that Georgina regards her with the suspicion someone might direct towards a loaded gun, yet when she decides that breaking into the offices in the dead of night is a good idea, what can you do but follow her blindly?

She tells you your diagnosis and when she reads the word “promiscuous” she winks at you, long and slow and you almost gulp. You’ve had guys wink at you before and with them it was quickly followed by a batting of the eyelashes then a quickie in the next room. But with Lisa, the wink feels like a question. It feels like a dare, someone poking you in the shoulder daring you to go further, to make the prank call, to strip, to kiss the person on your left. You’ve never been very good at dares but it’s midnight, you’re laughing, you’re in the fucking nuthouse, and you find yourself longing to kiss the girl on your left tonight. 

It shouldn’t be surprising when she sneaks into your room later, yet you still dart away as though you’ve been shocked. She laughs throatily, the laugh of a girl who’s been smoking a pack a day since she was little. “Cool it sweet pea. It’s not the fuckin boogeyman.” She eases herself onto the foot of your bed and starts crawling towards you, fucking crawling and part of you wants Georgina to wake up and part of you wants her to stay asleep forever because please God, you don’t know if you have the strength not to allow yourself this. It’s crossing a line if you do this, it’s a sin, it makes you fucked up and crazy just like Cynthia and they’ll probably never let you out but Lisa’s hands are in your hair, you can feel her chopped short nails cupping your head and fuck it. Fuck it. She’s warm and she’s hot and you kiss her as though you’re a sailor coming to shore for the first time in a decade. It’s intense, it’s intense so fast and you wonder if Lisa has been starving for this too. When she puts her hand down your pyjama bottoms you frantically look around at Georgina but she’s fast asleep. Lisa laughs again then starts to move her hand and you think it’s the first time you’ve felt anything in years.

Maybe for some people this wouldn’t change anything, after all your file seems to insinuate that you’re the expert in casual sex, but after the nightly visits start, you start noticing Lisa everywhere, Your head automatically turns to her, as though she’s a police siren going past you in the street and you can’t help but stare. Smiling at her during the bullshit yoga classes feels like something to look forward to, something to remind yourself of when things are shitty. Subconsciously, you memorise details about her until you know them by heart, recalling them at night before she comes like you’re reciting a poem or a prayer. The perfect shade of her contraband nail polish, the way she angles her wrist when she smokes, the curve of her thighs as she straddles a chair. You’re caught up in her completely, and start to think maybe being a “lifer” wouldn’t be so bad. Eternal youth in the nuthouse with the taste of Lisa’s lips on yours every night seems like a good alternative to slowly dying in the outside world.

When Polly cries, the two of you sit outside her room, singing with hoarse throats in the wee hours of the morning and though you know it’s the red haze of lust clouding your judgement, you can’t help but look at Lisa’s smile as she laughs out the lyrics to Downtown and question whether she’s a sociopath at all. Is she doing this to bring joy to Polly or is she doing this for you? You smile back at her and you know that this will not last, that this is not San Francisco and you’re not queer, and that Lisa is not your fucking soulmate or whatever but right now, it feels pretty good. You fall asleep on her shoulder and you swear as your drift off you feel her pull you in closer,she almost seems possessive. It’s a hold that promises she’ll never let you go. You let your dependency on her strengthen in that moment and don’t stop to think about how it might affect you in the harsh light of morning.

Shock treatments. They give her shock treatments and you feel as if you’re in one the horror novels you used to devour, because this can’t be happening, not in the real world that you live in. You’re drowning without her and you even experiment with holding your breath in the big metal tubs, just to see if it matches up. You’re cruel to your therapist, you’re horribly awful to Valerie because the primitively loyal part of your brain takes over the moment Lisa’s name leaves their lips, accompanied by the harsh curl of disgust. Fuck them, fuck everyone. Clearly it was you and Lisa against the fucking world, but now she’s fucking god knows where and you’re floundering. When she comes to your room, just as she did almost every night before, and she’s confused and calling you Jamie and you feel like you might have woken up into a nightmare. You consider for a split second not going with her, but only for that slight second. Because it’s Lisa, it’s your Lisa and she’s taking your hand and telling you to come with her and what are you to do but go?

She’s better in the car and you can’t help but whoop in victory. It’s just the two of you now and the dark night whizzes past, the streetlights that you haven’t seen in so long seeming like they are guiding your way down a red carpet, full of promise, the way you used to feel when you pictured your future. You kiss her once, chastely, always wary of the other passengers. To your delight she laughs and you blush, despite the fact that you’ve seen her in far more compromising positions than this. But now you’re in the real world and it still feels right. Maybe the two of you could make it. Maybe you’ll be at fucking Disney World within the week and you’ll be happy there and you’ll kiss her every night. Maybe it’ll make you both get better. As the car speeds on, all you you can think is that, for once, you don’t want tonight to be your last night on earth.

At Daisy's place, you’re on the bed with her cat, daydreaming about pancakes and the thought of an uninterrupted double bed with Lisa. Not even to fuck, not tonight, you’re exhausted. You just want to hold her, smell the sharp cherry of the shampoo she rarely uses, trace the harsh lines of her collarbones and just sleep. But apparently, Lisa’s sociopathic tendencies have other plans. She attacks Daisy, attacks her for everything she has and you yell but she doesn’t stop, not even for you this time. You’re overcome with the feeling that you aren’t supposed to be here, just like you always did late at night whenever you stayed over at a friends and couldn’t sleep, the constant sense of I Do Not Belong. Daisy goes upstairs and you could follow her, you should and then Lisa is beckoning you to the bed as though nothing happened and so, you choose ambivalence once again and you hide in the bathroom and try to sleep there, the harsh chill of the tiles seeming to rise up from the floor. You fall asleep, with the hazy memory of another night that felt a little like this, that ended with a shit ton of pills down your throat and an overwhelming relief that finally, the constant feeling that reality was not as it seems, would be over.

Daisy’s swinging body from her bathroom is a nightmare thing, a horrifying illustration that immediately burns itself into your mind like a cigarette marking a wood table. Lisa is trying to persuade you to leave, she’s shaking you but you keep staring and you sob and you can feel the soft angora carpet that her daddy picked out for her under your fingers as the self loathing threatens to eat you alive. The final nail in the coffin of your morality is when you’re actually disappointed that Lisa leaves without you. It’s just you and poor dead Daisy left now. And Ruby the cat.

They take you back and it’s both peaceful and unbearable without Lisa. The hidden corners where the two of you would make out like it was the end of days seem like old battlefields to you now, riddled with ghosts. You’re getting better, you can feel yourself getting better and you know, you know it’s partly because Lisa is gone. Yet part of you craves who you were with her. The fucked up exciting girl who would go to war with a world who rejected her if Lisa asked is gone. More and more you find a way to be okay with that. But God, you still miss her. You miss the physical comfort of another person in your space, of the way she would lightly tug the ends of your cropped hair when she was bored. Being haunted is melancholy but you guess it isn’t so bad. Until she comes back. The ghost isn’t supposed to come back.

The night in the tunnels when she takes Ruby is one of the worst of your life. You scream at her, you tell her she’s dead already and part of you wishes she was just so you could be done with hating yourself for wanting such an irredeemable person, and she sobs and you think she’s going to fucking kill herself. Georgina stops her and the relief that floods your body is followed by a flush of shame. It doesn’t matter what she’s done, a large part of you doesn’t want to live in a world where you can’t turn around and catch Lisa’s eye. But you’re leaving, and you stand in the dank, leaking old tunnel with her tear stained face staring at you desperately and know that you’re switching sides. Team Lisa- 0, Team World 1.

Out of what might be a sick need for closure, you visit her to say goodbye. She looks broken, handcuffed to the bed, her entire facade fallen away and you can’t tell if you enjoy seeing the real her or if you miss the reassurance of her feigned apathy. You don’t plan to but you tell her to get better and come see you and she smiles at you and you think that you love her. You love her, you love her, you love her and you’re leaving her. “I’m gonna miss you Susie-Q.” That’s what she murmurs, her voice fucking wrecked from all of the screaming. You’ll miss her too. You walk out, the smell of the hospital lingering after you and as you sneak one last glance at it, you wish she would run out after you because you love her god fucking damn it, can’t she be better because of that? But of course, she doesn’t. You step into the cab and let it melt away a little- the real world is already invading your mind and erasing the purgatory of the hospital. The purgatory of her. Sleep comes easy when you get home and for once you don’t dream of her eyes. Or at least you don’t think you do. You can never remember.

you don’t see her again. there wasn’t an open casket.


End file.
